Taking Lives
by The Threat
Summary: Lasting only one chapter, this short story serves as a prequal to my earlier story, 'Seeing is Believing'.


Disclaimer: Though the characters that appear here are mine, "Heroes" is created by Tim Kring. As for this story, it is inspired on the "Heroes" graphic novels.

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5 years earlier:

One class, somewhere in a small and insignificant town, in the the European country known as Belgium, we find one group of teenage guys at a local high school. They were all in class at that time, and all were noisy while the teacher was trying to teach them something new. One exception at that was a guy named Olivier. For as far as humanly possible, he tried to pay attention, dispite the fact that the subject being tought was nothing of his interest. Even if it were at all at his interest, it was still virtually impossible to follow with all the noise being made. But that wasn't the worst part! All Olivier ever did was sit in class, minding his own bussiness. Somehow, the other students couldn't accept that. Funny as it may seem, like they had said at some point in their lives once, they could not bear the sound of his voice, but when Olivier started to talk less, if not stop talking at all, they couldn't bear the silence. Either these students don't know what they want, or they were just looking for a reason to bully him as much as inhumanly possible. One time, one such bully had crossed a line.

Class had ended that moment, and everyone was headed for the playgrounds. Olivier was, as usual, just walking quietly, without bothering anyone. Though one student wouldn't let him. That student was named Jonas. It was his opinion that Olivier didn't belong among this crowd. HIS crowd! And he wouldn't stop until he had bullied Olivier out of the school. He managed to get within earshot with him, and called at him, loud enough for everyone to hear: "Hey, Halfwit!"

Olivier heard him. But since he was never a halfwit, at least not by definition rather than the context in which the word was frequently used, it was his opinion that he should not reply to Jonas.

"Hey! I'm talking to you, Handicap!" Jonas couldn't be stopped shouting.

This however did not intimidate Olivier. Jonas can shout all he wanted. Even if he had anything important to say, which he usually didn't, he could at least call Olivier by his name, rather than using vague or subjective descriptions. Unfortunately for Olivier however, Jonas wasn't bound to give up. He pushed Olivier against the nearest wall. This move got all other students present in the hall at that time to stop dead in their tracks, and watch the fight.

"Why won't you answer to my call!" Jonas yelled at him, "You Halfwit!"

"What the hell is your problem?" Olivier asked, not understanding Jonas sudden outburst.

"You are! You Halfwit!" Jonas replied as he pushed Olivier once again.

In Olivier's opinion, Jonas thought so high of himself, dispite that his dictionary appeared to contain just that one word: "halfwit".

Olivier pushed him back: "Just leave me alone!"

That's when he had crossed a line, Jonas thought to himself, so he grabbed Olivier by his shirt, and held him up against the wall. Even though Jonas wasn't at all any taller or broader than Olivier, in fact he was of the exact same size, yet it was obvious which one of the two was the strongest. Olivier knew that if he would kick Jonas, or even punch him,... try anything at all to hurt him, it would turn all around to him. Olivier would be punished because Jonas attacked him. The best he could think of was to squeeze Jonas's hands to make him let go. But when he did, something happened. Something neither one of them expected, nor did any of the other students. Jonas started to suffocate! Olivier didn't have his hands anywhere near Jonas his throat, nor was there anyone who had enough sympathy for Olivier to strangle Jonas in order to help him. For as far as he could see, there was nothing that would cause him to lose his breath. Was this guy asmatic? It's the only expanation Olivier could find.

"What's going on in here?!" the hall monitor had suddenly decided to come in between them. He drew Jonas away from Olivier.

"He... you...!" Jonas tried to catch his breath again, "He was killing me!"

"No I wasn't!" Olivier bit back.

"Yes you were!" Jonas couldn't be convinced otherwise, "And everyone can tell everybody that you were!"

Olivier turned to the hall monitor: "He just attacked me for no good reason, and suddenly sta...!"

"I attacked you!?" Jonas interrupted, "You just can't leave me alone!"

Before Olivier tried to defend himself towards the teacher, he tried to make sense out of all the words that Jonas kept uttering. But neither one of them made any sense whatsoever. He decided that this was a waste of time, and tried to tell the monitor what really happened. The monitor, however, had allready made his decission.

"You go see Mr. Ronsijn!" he told Jonas, after which he said to Olivier: "And you go see the headmaster!"

Olivier had seen many people ever since that day, to whom he had to repeat the same story over and over again. And it was the same each time: how Jonas had bullied him for unknown reasons, how he suddenly attacked him, and suddenly seemed to lose breath without knowing how or why.

Jonas, on the other hand, his side of the story could never be believed. At first he claimed that Olivier tried to strangle him, but there were no marks indicating that anyone ever touched his throat. Next he said that Olivier must have somehow did it by squeezing his arms. Nobody can deny that Olivier did that, but there was nothing that he did, or anyone could do, to strangle a guy by his arms. Even if he told this version of the story first, it still sounded like an excuse to everybody.

Bottom line is that nobody believed Jonas's side of the story. He got send to an institution, and was supposed to stay there until he reached the age of twenty. But his behaviour had caused his sentence to be lengthened to a much longer period, and if he held on like this... he'd be stuck there for the rest of his life.

Olivier had lived his life in a relatively normal way. Most of the other students, though they were no witnesses to the fight, believed Jonas's side of the story, and tried to make Olivier's life even worse than hell. Tried, because ever since the incident, the teachers had their eyes set differently upon the students. Any word they say, or anything they did, it could mean detention to them. It didn't stop them from doing anything though, but Olivier felt satisfied that at least this time his fellow students wouldn't get away with everything they did, if anything at all.

Still... Olivier was smart enough to know what can cause hyperventilation, or to even recognise when someone has astma. It still bothers him to this very day what it is that got that bully to suddenly suffocate like he did...

Jonas was bothered about it too. In his eyes, Olivier had it coming. He just tried to kill him for no good reason. And he will not rest until he got what he diserved, no matter what the cost.


End file.
